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BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 
OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 1 



THE HIGH SCHOOL'S CURE OF SOULS 



Edward o. Sisson, ph. d. 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 



SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 
OCTOBER, 1908 



ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER 
AT THE POST OFFICE AT SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 



UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BULLETINS 

The University of Washington has. not yet reached 
a point in its development where it feels justified in 
printing at University expense either the departmental 
investigations of its faculty or their occasional contri- 
butions to periodical literature. 

We are attempting for the present, however, to make 
a systematic collection and distribution of the writings 
of the members of the faculty by taking advantage of 
reprints of such material from various reputable period- 
icals. 

These reprints will appear from time to time as one 
or the other of two series, "University Studies," or 
"Occasional Papers." The former of these will represent 
a degree of careful scholarly investigation while the 
iatter will rather represent personal opinion based upon 
experience but claiming no degree of authority. 

These publications will be 'listributed to university 
and college libraries and the large public libraries on 
exchange account,' which will, of course, to a degree 
duplicate material already on hand, as many of these 
institutions are subscribers to the periodicals from which 
our reprints are made. However^ it is hoped most of 
them will be of sufficient value to justify duplication, for 
the convenience of having the- material in a form that 
can be classified and shelved more preeiselj^ than is pos- 
sible Vidth a periodical, as well as being much more usable 
when desired. 

We are making up our mailing list as best we can, 
not feeling quite sure what institutions will care to ac- 
cept and preserve these publications. If we include in 
the mailing list any institution that does not care for 
them, we shall deem it a kindness to be notified of the 
fact and the list will be revised accordingly. 



Gift 
The Uni^w 



Reprinted from the Educational Review, New Y6rk, April, 1908. 
Copyright, igo8, by Educational Review Publishing Co. 



IV 
THE HIGH SCHOOL'S CURE OF SOULS 

The ancient state at least in theory cared for the ethical 
development of its youth ; the early church assumed and mag- 
nified this function at the beginning of the Christian Era, and 
thanks to its universal presence and sway, could touch in some 
degree all the people. The separation of church and state, 
and the loss of catholicity in the external church have brought 
about the present conditions respecting religious and moral 
training: the church is no longer adequate for the task, and 
the state has not yet fully got its shoulders under the burden. 
This paper is written in the firm belief that the state, and 
especially its chief educational agent, the school, must and will 
assume complete responsibility for the development of moral 
character in all its youth; the trend in this direction is already 
well developed and unmistakable. 

The school, as contrasted with the home, the calling, the 
church, and some other educational agencies, wields its great- 
est force tJirii the intellectual processes; not merely upon 
these processes, but thru them upon the whole being; the 
home has far greater direct power over both emotion and will, 
as has probably the calling; the peculiar function of the school 
with respect to the formation of character lies in the enlighten- 
ment and enfranchisement of the zvill thru reason; in other 
words, in creating a body of knowledge and a power of in- 
tellect which shall stimulate and illuminate a righteous will. 

Probably a child's moral possibilities may be blasted before 
he is fourteen years old; certainly, on the other hand, much 
may be done before that age in laying the foundation for a 
complete moral character, in the form of physical and mental 
habits; but genuine moral character, autonomy of the will, the 
power of intelligent self-direction, does not and can not form 
before this age, but must in the main be developed later. A 

359 



360 Educational Review [April 

period varying somewhat with the individual, but in general 
not far from the age of high school attendance, is marked by 
the transition from the stage of imitation and obedience to that 
of volitional intelligence and self-direction; there is reason 
to believe that the high school period is even more critical and 
determinative than that of the college; the fact that more 
religious conversions occur in the high school period than in 
any other can not be without significance with respect to moral 
development. 

The two principles set forth briefly in the foregoing para- 
graphs lead to the proposition that the years from fourteen to 
eighteen offer to the school its supreme opportunity for char- 
acter building; the high school, of all grades of school educa- 
tion, should take the most active and effective part in the 
formation of character. 

All this becomes far more striking when we remember that 
out of the high school come practically all our leaders of every 
kind, social, moral, religious, political, and intellectual; thru 
a single high school boy the opportunity may be given to cieter- 
mine the conduct and destiny of a dozen, a score, a thousand, 
of those who do not enjoy the privilege of any part of a lib- 
eral education, thru the leadership which that boy may exer- 
cise in his mature life. 

What do we find to be the actual condition in our high 
schools in this respect? The teacher, here as elsewhere in 
our schools, is of unimpeachable character; it is foolish to 
doubt or deny the good moral influence of the school. With 
the cry of godlessness against the schools, now fortunately 
falling into discredit, no one who knows the schools has a 
moment's sympathy. The high school, like the elementary 
school, certainly exerts a beneficent influence upon the habits 
and character of its pupils. But this influence is almost en- 
tirely confined, as its admirers admit or even assert, to the 
operation of the personality of the teacher and the work and 
order of the school, — in other words, to the kind of influ- 
ence and the kind of training in which the home, the calling, 
and social life peculiarly excel. The peculiar duty of the 
school, which can not be fulfilled by any other agency, is, 



1908] The high school's cure of souls 361 

as we have seen, other than this, namely the creation of ethical 
enhghtenment and of a rational will. And in this respect the 
high school falls utterly short of its ideal; upon the intellect 
the school does assuredly work (tho not always with the best 
results even upon the intellectual side), but thru the intellect 
upon the will the school works but very little. 

Let us take a conspicuous example : Plato discusses at length 
the study of literature in the school; what is his chief theme? 
The working of the literature upon character ! His criterion 
of selection for school literature is the question : " What kind 
of character will the work in question produce? " Ruthlessly 
he rejects every my thus, however honored by immemorial 
tradition, which might imperil the moral ideals of the youth. 
Does this story inculcate false ideas of the gods ? Cast it out ! 
Does this set forth a false conception of courage? It is unfit 
for the school. Homer and Hesiod, the very Bible of the 
Greeks, are subjected without reserve to the test of moral 
influence, and large parts are condemned and eliminated. 
What of the teaching of literature in the modern high school ? 
Is moral influence the chief consideration, or a prominent ele- 
ment in our discussions? Turn to the Bible of the secondary 
school, the Report of the Committee of Ten; one finds much 
about linguistics and nothing about the play of literature 
upon the soul, upon the moral nature. Plato's mythus was 
history as well as literature; how does history fare in the 
Report? The conference expresses itself in no less than thirty- 
five resolutions, but we find no syllable declaring that the 
study of history may carve ineffaceable impressions of honor 
and courage, of humanity and civic righteousness, of devotion 
and noble life, upon the heart of the youth. No mention of 
all this in the formal resolutions : a search thru the thirty-six 
pages of discussion reveals a few incidental, one might almost 
say accidental, remarks, confined apparently to two pages 
(169-170), which imply the ethical value of the subject, and 
these are nearly all quoted. This is only the more aston- 
ishing when we consider that the history conference dealt also 
with civil government and political economy — that is, with 
the whole body of the social sciences; if the ethical thought 



362 Educational Review [April 

of our day reveals any one fact above all others, it is that 
human character rests upon social relations, and that social 
intelligence is an indispensable part of the kind of character 
demanded by modern democratic life. 

In the report of a conference of high school teachers, held 
at one of the largest state universities, the following are pro- 
nounced to be the purposes of secondary instruction in Eng- 
lish literature: 

" The purpose of secondary instruction in English literature 
is as follows : First, to enable the student to write and speak 
with clearness, vigor, and grace; second, to acquaint him at 
first hand with a few of the best literary products of English 
and American thought; third, to cultivate a sense of literary 
style; fourth, to inculcate a love of the best literature. Under 
the first head is included the development of the power to 
read aloud with sufficient skill to afford pleasure to the hearer," 
In a resolution on " The preparation of the teacher," no men- 
tion is made of ethical character or appreciation. 

An examination of the proceedings of important gather- 
ings for discussing the problems of the secondary school will 
show in general that these meetings are but little interested 
in ethical training; the question has been forced upon them 
in two or three ways, particularly in connection with the 
problems of discipline and order and the peculiarly modern 
questions of athletics and fraternities ; aside from this enforced 
discussion of moral culture, little is said about it. Above all, 
there is no adequate recognition of the positive and distinctive 
function of the high school which we have endeavored to point 
out. How pathetically weak has been the position of high 
school and college authorities in many cases regarding the 
ethics of athletics and athletic contests, comes to light on 
not a few occasions; all honor to those who have stood un- 
waveringly for truth and honor at all times, let the price be 
what it might ; they have rendered a great and notable service 
to moral culture in the secondary school. 

The fact is that the secondary school teacher is too much 
absorbed in the intellectual aspect of his particular subject; it 
is this aspect which he has learned to know and respect in 



1908] The high school's cure of souls 363 

the university; the plan of the school, the form of the cur- 
riculum, the examinations, the college entrance requirements, 
all tend in the same direction, until the very idea of ethical 
education is strange and uncongenial to the high school teacher. 
Nor can the over-intellectualism of the university graduate be 
a surprize to any one who realizes the vast transformation 
from the older type of American college, with its deep ethical 
and religious character, to the university of today with its 
intense specialized teaching and study on the one hand, and 
its absorbing athletic and social life on the other — a trans- 
formation pictured with power and fidelity by Mr. Clarence F. 
Birdseye in his really great book, Individual training in our 
colleges. 

What the American high school needs is just what English 
Rugby needed and what the immortal Arnold gave it thru his 
teaching and example, and as Hughes says, " above all thru 
his unwearied zeal in creating ' moral thoughtfulness ' in every 
boy with whom he came into personal contact."^ Woe unto 
the land if its future leaders lack moral thoughtfulness in its 
fullest sense : both the righteous intent and the practical wis- 
dom; only by these two elements combined in our statesmen 
and citizens can the republic be saved and the nation fulfil 
its destiny. 

Youth — the high school age — offers two golden opportuni- 
ties for character formation : the sense of personal honor 
and the growing realization of social relations; upon these 
two, education may build broad and high. President Hall 
has abundantly set forth the intense power of the feeling of 
honor; it is for the school to mold that sense and enlist it 
on the side of righteousness — for who does not see that it 
fights on all sides of almost every question? It went sadly 
to waste in the Spartan lad with his stolen fox under his 
tunic; but he at least had the moral support of his own social 
system; how much worse is the waste when a high school pupil 
knows no higher object of devotion than success in a ball 
game at any cost, or the acquisition of "souvenirs" filched from 
* Preface to Tom Brozvn's schooldays. 



364 Educational Review [April 

friends or foes ? Where is the sense of honor estrayed to when 
school and college youth will cheat and connive at cheating 
their athletic opponents by playing one of their number under 
a false name, or other such dishonorable and unsportsmanlike 
tricks ? Is it any wonder that thousands of grown men resent 
the name liar with a blow, but daily with unruffled soul lie and 
cheat by word and act? It would be utter injustice to lay the 
whole blame or even the chief blame for this low sense of 
honor upon the high school pupils or even the college students ; 
the elders, teachers, parents, the general public, can not wash 
their hands of guilt; the very same lads who led in the un- 
worthy trickery would with right and strong guidance have 
repudiated it with scorn, as is proven by the moral tone of 
many a high school and perhaps some colleges. 

It is trite to say that the youth takes his criteria of honor 
from the company he keeps, and chiefly from his elders; so 
far as the school is concerned in its present form there is proba- 
bly no place in which the sense of honor is so much affected 
as the athletic field, including the bleachers on the one hand 
and the rubbing-rooms on the other, and adding of course 
the endless talking-over to which every game and every inci- 
dent are subjected. Now in England the whole body of both 
teachers and students engage in athletics ; in America the ma- 
jority of the teachers have little interest in athletics, little time 
to devote to them, and small influence upon athletic ideals and 
standards ; the result is that the standards of the coach and 
trainer are dominant, and those standards are generally low 
and partial; to this is partly due the furious and devastating 
force of the passion to win, the most threatening element in 
the whole athletic situation. It should be quite clear that 
the blame for all this does not rest at the door of the athletic 
trainer — he does just what we might fandy expect him to do; 
we should all do much the same if we were in his place; the 
real fault is one of omission on the part of the rest of the 
teachers. Strictly speaking, the danger is not the great desire 
to win, which is an indispensable part of sport, but rather the 
defect of those higher ethical and chivalric ideals which should 
be supplied by the teachers whose minds are not strained by the 



1908] The high school's cure of souls 365 

peculiar situation in which the coach finds himself. What- 
ever is being done to ventilate the conduct of athletics and 
bring it all under the cognizance and control of the whole body 
of the school helps to cure this evil. 

Whatever is true of athletic contests is true, with slight 
modifications, of other interscholastic affairs — mainly, of 
course, those in oratory^ and debate; only it is easier here to 
get the right ideals into the place of power. 

Here let stress be laid incidentally upon one of the most 
crying perils of our higher education, the usurpation by inter- 
scholastic contests, chiefly athletic, of a place and prominence 
utterly beyond their merits. Not athletics, be it noted, but 
inter-school contests : true athletics and physical culture are 
yet far from liaviug place and regard enough; and the exor- 
bitant demands of the contests consume the interest and effort 
that ought to be devoted to real athletic work among the gen- 
eral body of the students. It would be absurd to censure 
the student for his intense and eager interest in contests : that 
is but the inevitable result of a healthy and vigorous nature 
in youth; the blame lies with the elders, both teachers and 
parents, who instead of wisely using and moderating the im- 
pulses of youth, weakly yield to them, or even act so as to 
add fuel to the flames. Both college and school papers and 
the daily press announce the opening of the fall session by 
cartoons of the football "hero" in full armor; all of which 
may be meant as jest, but is the expression of a most serious 
fact. " University ideals," at least so far as student opinion 
goes, are no longer of thought or scholarship, to say nothing 
of character and leadership, but of the gridiron and the dia- 
mond — or rather of the winning of victories thereon. 

The positive fruit of the education of the sense of honor 
should be a lofty, well-formed, personal ideal, embracing body, 
intellect, and principles of conduct. A modified form of the 
athlete's standard of physical habit and efficiency should be 
cultivated in every boy and girl : to be straight and sturdy, 
well-muscled, quick and sure in movement, and not easily 
"winded"; to have a good appetite, in quantity and also in 
discrimination, but to have it under the command of the will; 



366 Educational Review [April 

these should be deaf to the heart of youth, and nature has 
planted vigorous germs of all of them in every normal child. 
To know what one knows and be fully aware when one does 
not know, to see clearly with the eye of the mind as well as 
with that of the body, to hate obscurity, confusion, ambiguities, 
evasions, and to worship the crystal light of true perception 
and right reason, — these too belong to the personal ideal of 
the educated man. It need hardly be said that stimulus and 
nourishment of these two ideals, the bodily and the intellectual, 
ought to be the largest, as it is the highest service of the study 
of the classics, — but mere linguistic study has no power to 
these ends. The third element in the personal ideal is that of 
the self-determining righteous will : here above all places honor 
is the word to conjure with. There is that in the soul of every 
youth that resonates to the fiery answer of the old Hebrew, "Is 
thy servant a dog that he should do this thing ? " The ' hate of 
hates and scorn of scorns,' and the abhorrence of all things 
mean and low can never before or after be so quickly fanned 
into flame and strengthened into a steady light and warmth for 
life. These, then, are hints of the elements indispensable to 
rounded humanity and therefore belonging to the ideal by 
which every man should measure himself. 

So much for the sense of honor and its possible fruits : we 
turn now to the new perception that the youth has of his place 
as a member of a social community. 

The sense of social relationships is largely bred by the same 
converse and association that breed the sense of honor; but 
there is a rational and clear comprehension of social relation- 
ships which arises only from long-continued and progressive 
thinking; this we may call social intelligence. Such social 
intelligence is indispensable to moral character, and especially 
to leadership, hence its culture is a peculiar duty of the high 
school. There is no morality worth speaking of nor worth 
cultivating which is not social; mere self-interest is not really 
to the interest of self, to say nothing of its worthlessness to 
the body social; it is still true that he who sets out to save 
his life — for himself — shall lose it. The youth who goes out 
from the high school without a deep and ruling sense of the 



1908] The high school's cure of souls 367 

intimate bond between his conduct and destiny and those of 
his fellows, has been cheated of his birthright as an educated 
man. Plato voiced the great law of higher education when he 
declared that the men who had escaped from chains and the 
cave and had beheld the truth of things, must go back and 
rescue those still in bonds and ignorance. The high school boy 
and girl can understand what is obscure to the child in the 
eighth grade, — that we are bound each to each — father to child, 
brother to sister, friend to friend, and man to man; that my 
'conduct and destiny affect your conduct and destiny and yours 
mine. Moreover, this priceless truth which yesterday was 
concealed by childish immaturity, will tomorrow too often, 
alas! be obscured by what we call disillusion, which is really 
illusion and blindness of heart. The message that no man 
lives unto himself brings a new light and may bring a new 
resolve into the eyes of early youth; from the same message 
the riper youth or the grown man too often turns, as from the 
dream of an enthusiast. 

The curriculum of the high school" must be still further 
vitalized and humanized; far more attention must be paid to 
the presentation of life in history and literature : this does 
not mean merely more hours per week devoted to these sub- 
jects, but, in addition and more important, that the vital ethi- 
cal element in them be given its due place. Literature is far 
too much linguistics and verbalism; who does not know how 
the literature of power is daily robbed of all its force and 
reality for the student by being turned into dead matter for 
mental gymnastics? Wilhelm Tell, as an exercise ground for 
rules of grammar and syntax, is the type of our literature work 
in foreign languages ; hopes and fears, courage and cowardice, 
tyranny and patriotism, agony and death itself, are all drowned 
under a play of philological practise. Over against all this 
place the Greek boy with his Homer, his soul aglow with the 
throbbing life of the story, seeing as in a clear mirror 
the actual warm life, the glow of anger, the smoldering fire 

' On all this see G. Stanley Hall's expert and powerful, if possibly in 
part extreme, criticisms, in his chapter on "Intellectual development and 
education" in his Adolescence, or the abridgment thereof, Youth. 



368 Ediicational Review [April 

of resentment, the play of conduct and destiny — always a pic- 
ture of the life of man and a revelation of moral laws which 
rule over character and destiny. 

The same is true of history : we mean no disrespect to schol- 
arship when we say that it is far more important for the 
American youth to thrill with instinctive admiration or repro- 
bation of deeds fair or base than it is for him to know exactly 
what all the authorities say upon a mooted point. Unless the 
lives and characters of Washington and Lincoln and Arnold 
move the feelings and modify the will of the student, the teach- 
ing has been fatally incomplete; unless the vision of his coun- 
try's ascent and glory make the student another sort of man 
in his social and political relations, he has not gained from 
history its true gift. 

What is needed is that ethical revelation of the world^ which 
the great Herbart pronounced the supreme task of education. 
We can not but feel that his followers have too often forgotten 
the end in the means : they have been true to their leader in 
emphasizing the importance of instruction, but have not al- 
ways remembered that instruction deserves its high place only 
in so far as it is educative {erziehender Unterricht), that is, 
in so far as it breeds moral character. 

That the world is not ethically revealed to us is plain from 
our attitude toward many of its phenomena : most of us laugh 
at a drunken man ; yet no one to whom the spectacle is ethically 
revealed could laugh, for he sees in the reeling, grotesque 
figure all the shame and agony which are in and back of it; 
the debased humanity, perhaps the ruined life of wife and 
children. We should not cry war on such slight provocation 
if war had been ethically revealed by our study of history; 
to know that the battle of Gettysburg was fought on a certain 
day, with certain losses on Union and Confederate sides and 
the victory on the side of the Federals, can not conceivably 
affect the feelings nor move the will; let every student read 
Lincoln's exquisite letter to the Mrs. Bixley who had lost five 

* It seems fair to render thus Herbart's phrase "cesthetische Darstellung," 
in view of his identifying the ethical judgment with the esthetic, and of 
his emphatic insistence elsewhere that character is the only conceivable aim 
of education. 



1908] The high schools cure of souls 369 

sons in the war. (I have just consulted a dictionary of United 
States history, compiled by an eminent authority, but altho 
we find Binneys and Birneys and Bissells, this woman, to 
whom Lincoln himself wrote a letter of deepest reverence, has 
not even a line.) Let the youth also get some sense of Lin- 
coln's own agony of soul as he saw himself compelled by his 
sworn duty to send more and more of the sons and fathers 
of northern homes to perish on southern battle-fields. Let 
every lad get some insight into the privation, suffering, fear- 
ful drain of blood and treasure that war involves. 

It is true, of course, that the pomp and circumstance of war, 
and still more its heroisms and its possible justice, belong to 
its ethical presentation as well as do the tragedy and human 
agony; the glory and the heroism, however, are as a rule 
sufficiently imprest on youth outside of the school, and 
being only one side of the truth, and having a powerful hold 
upon emotions and will, render it all the more imperative that 
the other side should be revealed by the school as the agency 
which labors to give a balanced and rational conception of all 
things. 

It may be allowable to mention here three ethical ideas or 
principles which seem to the writer of paramount importance 
to the proper development of moral intelligence in the mind 
of the youth. The first is the truth that man is essentially 
social, that he is man only as he is social, and that hence, in 
Scripture phrase, no man liveth unto himself, but that the con- 
duct, character, and destiny of each of us affect others, tend- 
ing to make them better or worse, happier or less happy. Con- 
cerning this let us note first that it is a fact, not a theory nor 
an ethical precept; it has always imprest great minds, both 
the intellectual, as in the case of Aristotle, who defined man 
as the social being, and the ethical souls, who have all perceived 
that this truth lies at the root of the ethical as such. It need 
hardly be added that a clear perception of the fact, vitally 
revealed in pictures of actual life, leads naturally to the sense 
of social responsibility. 

The child has no innate idea of this truth ; he grows up with 
his wants constantly satisfied and so without any deep im- 



370 Educational Review [April 

pression of his own dependence upon father and mother; of 
their soHcitude for him, and of the extent to which their 
happiness is bound up in his character and happiness, he has 
no proper conception; unless, of course, all this has been re- 
vealed to his growing intelligence by careful instruction from 
day to day and year to year. Every high school principal has 
known boys who were set upon leaving school, altho their 
parents ardently desired them to continue; in many cases the 
boy simply has not got any glimpse of the bearing of his con- 
duct upon the joy or sorrow of his parents. Still less does the 
average youth perceive that his conduct and welfare touch and 
modify lives all about him, first near, then, in less degree no 
doubt, lives remote from him in both space and time, includ- 
ing the unborn who are later to inherit from him either indi- 
vidually or socially. 

Those who have dealt with boys must have been imprest 
with the fact that a boy often seems strangely indifferent to 
warnings relating to his own future welfare : he seems to feel 
that he has a right to hazard his own fate at his own dis- 
cretion. The same boy can often be touched and moved in- 
stantly by the fact that his undesirable conduct grieves and 
saddens his parents, impoverishes their lives, and darkens their 
declining days. The lad is more right than wrong: if his 
conduct affected only his own fate, who shall say that he might 
not then do whatever seemed right in his own eyes? The 
true ground of his duty is the social bond that makes his wel- 
fare one with that of those who love him. 

The second ethical idea to be imprest upon the youth is the 
truth touching his own relation to society : he ought to be 
shown his indebtedness to the community for nurture and 
culture, physical and spiritual. This idea can be grasped in its 
simpler form in early years : that is, the child can see clearly 
how much he owes to his parents and near friends; but this 
is far from sufficient for full social morality. The high school 
age brings the larger view of society in its economic and spirit- 
ual aspects which enables the mind to grasp the fact that each 



1908] The high schoof s cure of souls 371 

individual is indebted not only to parents, but also and far more 
deeply and essentially to generations past away, and to leaders 
and heroes and progressive and devoted spirits on every hand. 
The youth is not furnished for moral intelligence until he 
understands that human progress and the high social state 
to which he is born are possible only because many men are 
willing to give more than they receive, to serve greatly and 
be served little, to sacrifice private and personal ease and gain 
to the good of all. 

These two ideas lead naturally to the third, — that life gets 
its significance and worth from service. History and litera- 
ture reveal the truth that not only the Man of Nazareth, but 
all whose names are most highly cherished and adored, came 
not to be ministered unto but to minister, and are truly ad- 
mirable because they did so. Our own annals are rich in this 
respect, with Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and unnumbered 
less illustrious but not less worthy names. This idea forms 
the true first principle of the relation of each of us to the 
common weal, and has power to transform and elevate the 
whole conduct of life. Note again that the child is far from 
possessing any original or instinctive conception of this truth : 
he rather inclines by nature to think that a man is great in 
proportion as he gets, possesses, enjoys. He needs instruc- 
tion and illumination in order to perceive that service is the 
highest mark of greatness. 

All this is impossible and to attempt it would be worse than 
useless, without deep moral earnestness in the teacher. The 
moral education of the school is accomplished largely thru 
the play of the teacher's righteous judgment upon the sub- 
ject-matter of the curriculum. " No direct instruction," says 
Arnold's biographer, " could leave on the pupils' minds a 
livelier image of his disgust at moral evil, than the black cloud 
of indignation which past over his face when speaking of the 
•crimes of Napoleon or Caesar, and the dead pause which fol- 
lowed, as if the acts had just been committed in his very 
presence." * In fact, while there are valuable specific means 

* Stanley's Life of Arnold, p. 142. 



372 Educational Review 

and instruments for moral education in the school, such as we 
have mentioned, history, literature, and the social sciences, yet 
the teacher is always the indispensable agent, without whom all 
these are but idle instruments. Let the high school teachers 
become once possest with a sense of their opportunity and 
their responsibility, and ways will not be wanting. But the 
great theme of the person and opportunity of the high school 
teacher, and especially the tragic need of more men in our 
American high schools, is no topic for an addendum to this 
paper; fortunately the import of the subject is dawning upon 
the minds of educators and the more intelligent public. 

Edward O. Sisson 
University of Washington 



m 21 1909 



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